Workflow:Writing Snagging Writer Blogs Without Permission [UPDATE]

There's a site called Workflow:Writing that has a list of blogs about writing. Although I can't speak to all in that long list, I heard from one, on a writers' board, who had until recently been on the list. No one had asked her permission. This site took her RSS feed and posted it, along with all the other sites, and had advertising displayed against it. Click on one of the article links, and you get the original page, only in a frame with a top section that shows a banner ad and the Workflow:Writing logo. Maybe this one woman's blog was the only one stolen - because that's what you call it when you appropriate someone else's property for your own gain. But I have a funny feeling that if I checked with the other bloggers, I'd be hard-pressed to find one that had given explicit permission. If you blog about words, check the link and see if its own had co-opted you. And if you don't, consider stopping by there and expressing your dismay over people who want to cash in on the hard work of others. This site is worse than a writers' mill. At least those offer some token payment. One ironic point: one site with at least one article posted is PlagiarismToday.

UPDATE: Make that two writers whose work has appeared and who said that they hadn't given permission. Any guesses on how many did give permission? Do I hear ... none?

Gresham's Law of the Web: Crap Content Quashes Quality

This is actually a link to a post I did on BNET a couple of days ago. People have asked me what damage writer mills can really cause. Here's my answer - and it's a much bigger picture than how much some writers make:

Gresham's Law of the Web: Crap Content Quashes Quality

Wired on Demand Media

I've covered some of the financial background of Demand Media and its writer mill, Demand Studios, but I'd strong suggest that people also read this article in Wired. It looks at the operational model of the company, which is essentially a virtual factory making money off piecework by writers, videographers, and, soon, photographers.

The process is automatic, random, and endless, a Stirling engine fueled by the world’s unceasing desire to know how to grow avocado trees from pits or how to throw an Atlanta Braves-themed birthday party. It is a database of human needs, and if you haven’t stumbled on a Demand video or article yet, you soon will. By next summer, according to founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt, Demand will be publishing 1 million items a month, the equivalent of four English-language Wikipedias a year. Demand is already one of the largest suppliers of content to YouTube, where its 170,000 videos make up more than twice the content of CBS, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera English, Universal Music Group, CollegeHumor, and Soulja Boy combined. Demand also posts its material to its network of 45 B-list sites — ranging from eHow and Livestrong.com to the little-known doggy-photo site TheDailyPuppy.com — that manage to pull in more traffic than ESPN, NBC Universal, and Time Warner’s online properties (excluding AOL) put together. To appreciate the impact Demand is poised to have on the Web, imagine a classroom where one kid raises his hand after every question and screams out the answer. He may not be smart or even right, but he makes it difficult to hear anybody else.

The result is a factory stamping out moneymaking content. “I call them the Henry Ford of online video,” says Jordan Hoffner, director of content partnerships at YouTube. Media companies like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, AOL, and USA Today have either hired Demand or studied its innovations. This year, the privately held Demand is expected to bring in about $200 million in revenue; its most recent round of financing by blue-chip investors valued the company at $1 billion.

Using sophisticated automation, computers decide on the topics and issue story assignments based on what does well in web searches and advertising terms. Equally automated analysis predicts how much revenue in search advertising the piece can bring in. Those that offer enough revenue are given the nod.

It's essentially a service article machine, turning out what might as well be front-of-book pieces at a cheap rate. Will it compete with all writing markets? No, because they can't get the research and work that many who hire writers need. However, does it undercut certain types of content? Absolutely. If you're used to writing quick how-tos or other service-type material, then as things move to the web, you are basically out of business. And can it affect all markets? I suspect it could, as the greatly lowered prices begin to affect perception of value.

Writer Mill AllVoices.com Answers

The following came in as a comment on my post about AllVoices.com being a writer mill -- that is, wanting writers to provide content for little to no money. But I wanted to address it more directly, as it seems to come from AllVoices.com CEO Amra Tareen:

Erik, you are absolutely right the writers, photographers and citizens that can have their own website, search engine optimize the content, reach a global audience and build a community should develop their own site. As you 80% of blogs out there have an audience of one.

Allvoices is about people reporting news and opinion and discussing it with allvoices diverse community. The site automatically create context around the user reports with images, newsstories links, blogs and videos in real time. plus allvoices has a community from over 167 countries that contributes and share news. We have a recommendation engine that connects people together from all over the world. The program is an incentive not a salary. Also not everyone needs to join the incentive they can write for views, audience and connections.

Let's address the misconceptions and mistakes in this answer. Do most blogs have a small to non-existent audience? Absolutely. Then again, most blog are not intended to be anything more than outlets of self-expression. And when marketing and exposure is the intent, clearly you need to do work to get more of an audience, particularly an audience that can respond in a way that turns into more work. Or you might be looking for an audience, in which case you want to focus on your connection to them as the primary thing, not the connection to some publication or site.

As to the assertion that AllVoices "is about people reporting news and opinion and discussing it with allvoices diverse community," I have two words: horse shit. This is a business being run by a woman who apparently has an MBA from Harvard and was a partner at an early-stage VC fund. She has held multiple positions in high tech management. There are multiple Ph.D.s on the management team.

This is not some altruistic venture, folks. It's a business. So when I heard, "The program is an incentive not a salary," I think, "Sure, you want to pay peanuts to get the content that might give you something to sell." Here's the headline from the page on which the company describes the incentive program: "Build Your Brand. Gain Influence. Make Money." Let's take this in three steps:

1. You don't build your brand. You build their brand. The more content they have, the more they drive appearances in search engines and, ultimately, the more money they make.


2. Gain influence? You have got to be kidding. If I write a piece for the New York Times Magazine I gain some influence -- for that moment. If I write something that hits the front of HuffPo, for heaven's sake, I might get momentary influence. If I write for AllVoice, I get, "Who?"


3. Make money? I thought this was about brand?

According to the site, you can make a whopping 25 cents to $2 per thousand page views, and you only get the upper end if you can achieve a minimum of 100,000 views. If you'll remember a point I've made before, run of site ads are likely paying in the $10 per thousand range. To put that into perspective, I blog on a fairly high profile site, and even after building what I'm doing for well over a year, that's several months of page views for me.

AllVoices had claimed on its site in February that it hit the one million monthly visitor mark. In responding to Angela Hoy, it claimed 2.7 million. Maybe. I checked Alexa.com, got the percentage of global page views and compared it to that of my own domain. Doing the math, it sounds as if the company is maybe 1.5 million page views a month. You always have to take these site estimates with a grain of salt, but it certainly sounds odd compared to the company's claims. It would also mean that they're bringing in maybe $15,000 a month, which is nothing for a company like this. In other words, the chance of making significant income from the venture might as well be zero.

So there's no money and no real branding advantage. To me, that translates into no reason at all to work for yet another writer mill.

Another Writer Mill: AllVoices.com

I'm mostly going to point to Angela Hoy's post about what appears to be yet another writer mill: AllVoices.com. An important point she makes is about minimum pay-out numbers. As most writers don't make diddly at these sites, a minimum aggregated sum for getting paid likely means that most of the earnings remain in the pocket of the publisher. Here's how the site responded to her email to it:

The new program is about building a personal brand, writer's portfolio and citizen journalism. We try very hard to help users make money by teaching them how to promote their material (and promoting it ourselves). Also, we're bringing in partners that will sponsor the top writers. Passionate and quality writers can build great momentum and earn money. We're driving 2.7 million visitors to our site each month. Even though we say "the money you make depends on how well you do", for a lot of writers it's not about the money. It's about writing and sharing their opinions.

Now, let's assume $10 cost per thousand for advertising. That's at least $27,000 a month in revenue, or $324,000 a year. That's actually not a huge amount for a business, but, still, it's a business, not a charity. But it is trying to position itself as a place that will "promote" what writers do. You might as well create your own site and work to develop an audience that's interested in you, rather than grabbing some tiny percentage of whatever the site's overall traffic is.

Writer Mills Making Money on Articles

I've gone on at length about the money that Demand Studios has made off paying writers a pittance. But payment gets far worse at some of the other mills. However, it doesn't mean that those companies aren't getting an astounding mark-up from their customers.

Let's start with Helium.com. As I've noted, if you crunch through the numbers they've made public, the average article makes 80 cents. (Ironically, while searching I found a piece I wrote about the company back in 2007 when it introduced its "Marketplace," with writers setting prices from $20 to $200 and Helium taking a 20 percent commission for the massive undertaking of listing the piece.)

But have you ever wondered how much Helium charges for what you write? I did a little snooping and got a price list directly from the company itself. It still has the Marketplace, only the customer sets the price and lets writers compete for the job. Great, eh? But the real eye-opener is for that stock content it offers. Purchase fewer than 25 articles and you're paying ... $30 each. Up the volume to between 25 and 49 and it's $25 each. That's every time the article sells. Quite the mark-up.

It's not the only case of a writer mill charging vastly more for content than it pays. Look at AssociatedContent.com. A typical online advertising CPM, or cost per thousand page views, is $10. If the ads delivered with an article get 5,000 views, that's $50 in revenue at a conservative estimate. How much does the writer get paid? Between $1.50 and $2.50. For 50,000 page views, or $500 in revenue, the payment to the writer is between $75 and $100. Let me tell you from experience in blogging commercially: the chance of getting 50,000 hits on a collection of articles even over the period of a month is pretty flipping slim unless you have many up. (By the way, since 2006, AssociatedContent has racked up about $21.4 million in VC money. It claims such clients as Autobytel.com, IAC, Mojo, and GoDaddy.com. The CEO was formerly chief marketing officer at CBS Interactive and, before that, was at Google for four years.)

I don't have the numbers on the flat fees that AC may pay, but I do on Delegate2, otherwise known as PureContent.com, which is the firm that shows up when searching for the former name on Google. You may remember my reporting that the company offered $3 for a "simple" 250 word article. What do they get for the short simple articles from their clients? According to a price list from the company, that would be $16. And for a more complicated article that has writers spending "extra hours researching your subject"? Try $50 for the same 250 word article. So what are they paying the writer? $10? For hours of research?

These mark-ups of 500 percent are large and show how much the writer mills depend on authors opting for orts. There's a reason I refer to this as piecework or a company store. Let's use one more term: sucker bait. They're looking for people who don't realize how much more money work can provide.

Writer Mills Making Big $: Demand Studios

Warning, there will be ranting, foul language, crankiness, and gloves-off head-slapping here. I'm angry, and by the time you finish reading this, you'll be angry as well, if you're a freelance writer. Either that, or you're either dead from the shock or enjoying the life of a masochist.

Anyone who follows this blog knows that I've been taking shots at what I've come to call writer mills: companies that grind writers bones to make their dough. But I realized that there's one aspect I haven't covered: what the companies themselves are making off the cheap content. Maybe it's my own twisted perception, but these sites seem to exude a sense of "we're all in this together" bonhomie. Better change the last word to baloney.

So here's the first of a series, because I find it to be the most egregious case of a company making literally hundreds of millions of dollars -- a year -- off writers who will spend more time researching a story than a company offering peanuts for time, the one irreplaceable resource.

I've written before about Demand Studios and had the company respond, and in various comments had many people agree that you'd have to be nuts to work for that kind of money as well as had one person claim in the comments to be making something like $3K a month.

So what does Demand Studios make? I did some pretty easy snooping around various sources of information independent of the company. First, stop thinking of it as Demand Studios and use the real name of the corporation: Demand Media. "Studios" gives it a homey feel, as though you're working with a small group of people also trying to make a living in a tough world. Think again.

First, the CEO of Demand Media is Richard Rosenblatt. In case the name doesn't sound familiar, this is the now 40-year-old who sold MySpace.com and its parent company to Rupert Murdoch for $600 million. Certainly he didn't get all of that; venture capital backers would have taken a huge slice. But this is far from someone who is living paycheck to paycheck.

Speaking of venture funding, Demand Media has received it to the tune of $355 million since its founding in 2006. No, I'm not misplacing a decimal point. The company has received huge amounts of capital from such investors as Oak Investment Partners, Spectrum Equity Investors, and Goldman Fucking Sachs and, as a result, has shown about a $1 billion market valuation. According to a BusinessWeek article in July 2009, Demand Media was pulling in more than $200 million a year. The company hasn't confirmed that, but Rosenblatt says that it is profitable.

Are you starting to get a clearer picture yet?

Let's dig in more and look at some of its business activities:

• It owns eNum, which is one of the top sellers in the world of Internet domains.


• It supplies content to, among others, Reuters and USA Today.


• Via Pluck, a social network software developer it bought for a reputed $75 million in cash according to TechCrunch, it provides software to the likes of Gannett/USA TODAY, Guardian Unlimited, Hearst Corporation, Fox, The Washington Post, Scotts, Circuit City, and Kraft.


• According to ReadWriteWeb, another reliable source of tech info, Demand Media has a network of sites that is the 24th most visited in the US, as reported by comScore. These are page views driven by massive amounts of content, most of which is generated by freelance writers. To put that into perspective, that's more popular than NBC Universal, ESPN, and Expedia, as BusinessWeek notes. And the traffic brings such advertisers as Ace Hardware and Target.


• It's cut a deal with Sony to put self-help videos onto the former's Bravia television sets.


• Demand Media claims to have delivered a huge number of video streams to consumers, whether directly from its own sites or through YouTube. In fact, it says the number is over a billion.

This isn't some cobbled together attempt by a small group of would-be entrepreneurs to make a little money, paying writers a pittance because there isn't cash to spare. This is a calculated, conniving, cynical corporate hyena that knows volume of content drives search results, and that shakes down the money tree. Only, that money gets vacuumed up as fast as it forms by the corporation, which manages to pay $15 for an article and $3.50 for editing. For the writers who claim to make $3K in a month, that's 200 articles, or roughly 7 articles a day, seven days a week.

Demand Media rakes in the dough, depending on the power of content, and is happy to have writers and editors slaving away at sub-burger-slinging wages. And there are thousands and thousands of writers who get taken in. Those who do aren't going to like what I'm about to say: You are all a bunch of sad dupes and Rosenburstwithbucks is undoubtedly laughing his ass off, or at least shaking his head in wonder, at the amount of time people will sell their souls and lives for less than what it would take to buy them and their significant others a cheap meal out just to get their heads patted and have the occasional compliment tossed their way. If you've been writing for Demand Studios, or any of these other writer mills, do yourself and the rest of us a favor and watch this clip of Harlan Ellison talking about getting paid as a writer.

They want everything for nothing. They wouldn't go for five seconds without being paid, and they'll bitch about how much they're paid and want more. I should do a freebie for Warner Brothers?

Or for Demand Media or any of the writer mills? This makes me so angry that I want to grab writers by the collar and slap them repeatedly until the dazed look leaves their eyes and they get mad. Get mad at me first if that helps, but then get mad at those big corporations that are conning you and get mad at yourselves for letting them. That's all this is, a giant con job from the companies that writers are actually doing something valuable. And they are -- something valuable to the companies and to the rich people that start them and invested in them.

For those who feel the need to write something, anything, start a blog. Create a newsletter. Put together a fanzine. Just do something that belongs to you, so that should something come of it, you're the one benefiting. Let the big time investors do their own work for a change.

Writers Mill: Delegate2

A colleague gave me the head's up for another listing on JournalismJobs.com.

Company

Delegate2 Group

Location

UK

What They Want

People who can write on a variety of subjects with a good grasp of grammar and strong writing skills to join a claimed roster of 500 writers and 100 editors. At least, that's what they claim at the site where the writers are directed. On the site where they try selling the content, they claim 1250 writers and 200 editors.

What They Offer

At the low end, a "simple" 250 word article for $3. But wait, they make up for it in simplicity, as "most experienced writers being able to complete four in an hour." Oh, yeah, that's about in the upper end of burger-flipping money. They pay in one month arrears, which means that they don't pay until the one time the next month that they do pay. Depending on timing, that could technically be longer than 30 days.

What That Means

That's 1.2 cents a word. They say that they pride themselves on establishing long-term relationships with writers, though they've only been in business for two years. I'm surprised that "experienced" writers would last two hours.

Writers Mill: Digital Media Buzz

A friend and colleague emailed a link to this JournalismJobs.com listing for writers from Digital Media Buzz. And I'm using this to test a new format in reporting these professional aberrations.

What They Want

In-depth news analysis of the digital media technology industry, including business practices, online ad/revenue technology, software development, SEO, e-commerce, and mobile technology.

What They Expect

People with journalism experience, whether in paid positions or as interns.

What They Offer

$30 per 500 to 1000 word story. As the ad read: "Yes, it's not exactly $1/word, but we need a ton of content written and promise a steady stream of income to anyone looking to make a name for himself or herself."

What That Means

You get paid between 3 and 6 cents a word as often as you'd care to and probably have to write the analytic pieces with precious little time to read or think before grinding it out. Sausage never had it so good.

Two more Writer Mills: Voyage.tv and Trails.com

Just came across these two while looking at the Mediabistro job boards. (An aside - always market, always look for new venues/clients, and never dismiss off-hand a potential source of leads, because something interesting might come about.)

Voyage.tv calls itself "is a newly launched travel and lifestyle media company" with a focus on luxury travel:

The cornerstone of the Voyage experience is our original lifestyle and destination video programming, which inspires, informs and entertains. Shot in vivid High Definition, our Hotel & Resort Profiles, Activity & Tour videos, and Signature Series deliver content that is unbiased, current, accurate and above all, personal. Original feature articles written for the discerning traveler supplement this video programming.

They want articles that don't exceed 600 words. And how much does this video-oriented, luxury pursuing site pay per article? A flat $25. Don't look for the zeros to the right of the five unless they fall after the decimal place. Instead of not exceeding 600 words, how about not exceeding 25 words? That would be at least be a buck a word.

As for Trails.com, apparently it has outsourced editorial to Demand Studios. Assignments vary in length and pay ... wait for it ... $15 each. And it gets better, "with some rates higher or lower depending on the length and format of the assignment." Lower than $15? That's even worse than the numbers I've been hearing about Demand Studios in general, though at $30 or so, they are also risible.

At least this ad and the one from Voyage.tv said up front how much they wanted to spend, which means you can keep moving on to other ads. That's better than most Demand Studio ads or anything I've seen from Helium.com. When a company typically (and incessantly) trolls for writers without saying what they're paying, it might be that they know what the reaction would be.

There's a sales psychology at work - and, yes, someone is trying to sell you because they want something for next to nothing. When you've invested time into checking out an opportunity, you become more open to it because you don't want to feel as though you were suckered. Just remind yourself that you're not really suckered unless someone gets you to spend the time writing for such a laughable amount. I don't care how many damage-controlling writer mill executives come leaving comments or emailing me and I don't care how many writers want to say how they can make a living doing this. There is no way that at a freakin' $15 -- or even $25 or $30 or $50 -- an article you can make a living -- or even supplement one.

Maybe some people who want to be writers don't have the drive or the skills to do better. In that case, they should simply recognize that fact and enjoy writing for its own sake. Guess what? I'm not going to appear on the stage of the Met singing a lead in a Handel opera, nor dance in a professional ballet, nor be made the CEO of some large company. That's fine. We all have to learn where we can excel. And there's nothing wrong with singing in the shower, if you enjoy it. However, grinding out intellectual sausage for the sake of money that wouldn't even buy a hardcover book is nuts.

Another Writer Mill: Atlantic Publishing Co. (APC)

I seem to be on a kick of discussing professional wastes of time, which I'm calling writer mills. These organizations bring in writers, grind them for whatever word juice is available, and pay a pittance. Now there's another to add to the list: Atlantic Publishing Company (APC).

Recently I've mentioned Helium and Demand Studios. Both share some telling characteristics and give insight into the institution of the writer mill:

• The pay makes burger flipping seem like glamorous high-rolling.
• The only way to really make money is to let quality fly to the winds, because you almost need to end the assignments before they start to make a reasonable dollar per hour figure.
• They constantly advertise for new writers, suggesting the deal is so bad that they cannot keep people around for long.
• (Bonus Characteristic) They have executives scouring the web, looking for potential criticism and trying to counter it.

On the first three points, APC seems to be lining up as a classic writer mill. The company advertises fairly frequently. Here's the copy of an ad on JournalismJobs.com (though the ad is set to expire on July 29:

Atlantic Publishing is looking for writers in various fields to write books on subjects such as: Building, Cooking, Farming/Animals, Gardening, Arts/Crafts, Recycling, Internet/Technology, Business/Investing, Real Estate, Finance, Parenting, Pets, Publishing, Education, and Self-Help. This position is a freelance opportunity. The payment varies from project to project. Writers are not required to reside in Ocala, FL, work may be done anywhere in the United States. If you are interested please contact Amanda Miller at amiller@atlantic-pub.com with your resume and writing sample.

I was curious at one point this year and replied to one of the ads. Here's what they said in an email about their projects:

Because we have many manuscripts that need to be rewritten, and each are in different stages of writing, the amount of work that needs to be done will vary. Some of the material in the manuscript may be useable [sic] or the book may need to be rewritten completely. Some sections may just require you to revise information to make the material up-to-date or reorganize. We would like to hear your comments on the manuscript, how much work you feel needs to be done, and how you can contribute to the book.

On the low end it's supposed to be copy editing, and the upper bound is full rewrite. Given that range of scope, what do you think they might pay? Here's the answer:

Upon acceptance of your bid we will e-mail you our freelance author agreement ( work for hire), and research material to complete the work. Typical time frames run from 30 days to 90 days for completion, we pay upon acceptable stages of completion, we check all manuscripts against proprietary plagiarism software, and we typically pay from $500.00 - $1,600.00 depending on the scope of the work involved. Many of our authors have completed several manuscripts for us. We give you full credit on the cover, in online databases such as R.R. Bowker, Amazon.com, B&N.com, and recorded CIP data in the library of congress.

Oh, goody -- credit. And a full typical $1,600 to completely rewrite a flipping book on a work for hire basis (though technically books don't quality for work made for hire under U.S. copyright law). That even makes a publisher like Adams Media, known in the industry for its relatively low fees, seem like a spendthrift. No wonder they check manuscripts with plagiarism software, because they're barely paying enough for a chapter. Why does any writer mill think that people will slave away for laughable sums? Because they get enough inexperienced ones to do so and know when they leave, dejected and squeezed, there will be others whose credulity and eagerness to "get into the business" will leave them vulnerable.

The only point I couldn't verify was the bonus characteristic of whether their executives also troll online, looking for anyone that might question their practices. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.